"We are having this baby" I said to my husband, my voice was more goat than human. I hugged him tight through my next contraction. I realized that I needed to push. "I need to push, I need to push!!" I cried out. "Go for it."said the nurse. And so I did. "Crowning!" she announced. "Reach down here. Can you feel that? It's your baby's head. Ok, STOP pushing, do your best NOT to push." she said. Yeah, that wasn't going to happen. My body screamed at me to push, I NEEDED to push! She then ran out of the room, leaving me to wonder whether my husband and I would deliver this baby alone. Suddenly my room was teeming with people scrambling to get ready. The hospital bed had been transformed into a delivery table, and a giant spotlight had come out of the ceiling. Everyone introduced themselves one at a time (like I was going to be able to remember any of their names?), and I was feeling hysterically okay with the fact that these strangers were all face-first in my lady parts. Now I REALLY needed to push and my doctor still wasn't there. My dear husband asked the nurse if she had ever delivered a baby without a doctor present. She said they would if they absolutely had to do it. As luck would have it, my doctor walked in just then.
My labor and delivery went blindingly and excruciatingly fast. I pushed for thirty minutes and I felt every last shred of it. I was begging my doctor to just pull him out. My doctor and nurses were shouting all kinds of directions at me. Relax this! Tighten that! Hold your breath! Now breathe! Now relax! Now turn this way! Push! Finally, while silently pleading with my God to let the next push be my last, I realized that I needed to be the one issuing orders. Only I could bring this child out into the world, and only I knew how that needed to happen. I gritted my teeth, tuned out the voices in the room, and breathed through a glorious, empowering push.
The pain was over. "Ana, open your eyes!" my doctor said, and immediately placed him on my chest. I saw a beautiful little being that screamed in my arms. My husband and I were quite emotional. We examined his chubby fingers, large head, broad shoulders, and mini toes. The nurse took my sweet boy, studied, weighed and measured him. "he is pretty close to perfect" she said. I was proud of myself for delivering a healthy almost 9 pound baby with NO epidural. A four hour labor, now that is something to brag about.
As I sat on an ice pack in my recovery suite, staring at this beautiful creature as we nursed together, feeling blissfully happy and under the influence of all kinds of crazy cocktails of new mother hormones. I couldn't stop thinking about the whole experience and looking at this beautiful being in my arms.